Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(137)

Not only had Freddy taken pictures inside the place, he had managed to get pictures of highly classified documents detailing the program objectives.

The program’s goal was to reprogram the nanomachines to better understand human DNA, producing an upgrade that could understand the original blueprint, then fix any flaws, repairing anything that differed from the ideal. The very idea of such a master blueprint made Phil sick at his stomach. Unfortunately, the actual experimental results were far worse.

The new nanites were capable of being reprogrammed, an item which, by itself, would have been worthy of a front-page news story. Each nanite was a relatively simple machine, certainly lacking the sophisticated processing to understand human DNA. But the nanites didn’t operate that way. Using a principal called swarm computing, the individuals passed information amongst themselves similar to colonies of ants or bees. And, when done correctly, this swarm acquired much greater computational capacity, something like a hive mind.

Efforts to train the Henderson House nano-swarms to understand human DNA had so far produced disastrous results. While the nanites had learned to regenerate new limbs and organs, their learning was more complicated than just training a neural network. The objective was to make them understand the goal, then let them teach themselves to accomplish it.

The self-teaching process involved a complicated system of trial, error, and feedback. And despite numerous attempts at retraining, the nano-swarm view of making humans better by adding or replacing parts had produced things that bore little resemblance to humans.

In experiment after experiment, the human subjects had been turned into the stuff of nightmares, with extra internal and external organs, limbs where no limb should be, extra mouths, eyes on stalk-like appendages that could have been fingers.

Worse yet, the nano-swarms kept learning, changing their designs as they learned. The effect on the poor subjects was terrifying, producing mind-altering pain as the reconstruction process continued.

Phil finished examining the pictures, glancing down at the trashcan into which he had just hurled the contents of his stomach. Suppressing a desire for two packets of Alka-Seltzer, Phil picked up his cell phone and pressed the first number on speed dial.

“Hello?”

“John. It’s Phil. I want you to recall whoever you need. Tonight we’re rolling out with a special edition.”

“On Thanksgiving Day?” Annoyance crept into his production specialist’s voice.

“Don’t argue, just do it. And make it fast.” Phil hung up without waiting for a response.

As he ejected the CD from his computer, Phil experienced something that most newspaper editors rarely experience: the feeling of having just been handed a story that was about to leap from the front page of his paper onto every broadcast news program in the country. Hell—in the world.

As he began to shut down his laptop, his eyes settled on the last photograph he had been viewing. On a pad just outside Henderson House, Dr. Donald Stephenson had just stepped out of a government helicopter.

Sliding the disk into his jacket pocket, Phil Rabin pointed at the screen and smiled.

“Gotcha.”





143


Military bases in the continental United States had never been this easy to penetrate, but alert forces had been stretched by an extended period of overdeployment. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had taken their toll on the US military. As great as the all-volunteer force had been under Ronald Reagan, that force had always been a mighty war axe, something designed to smite the country’s opponents with overwhelming combat power, rapidly destroying all resistance before being returned to the shed to be sharpened and hung back on the wall to await its next use.

For years now, this awesome force had been used like a hatchet, thousands of small little strokes steadily dulling its blade, no downtime allotted for resharpening. A new political philosophy for the use of America’s military had emerged in Washington, a violation of the Powell Doctrine that Jack called the Strategy of Underwhelming Combat Power, a term that yielded the unfortunate acronym “SUC Power.”

Schriever Air Force Base had not escaped this drag on combat readiness. Although the gates were heavily guarded, with their ID checkpoints and random vehicle searches, the huge extent of perimeter fencing was thinly patrolled. For that, Janet was thankful. It kept some brave young American servicemen away from her Jack, allowing them to live to fight for their country on another day. After all, this was Thanksgiving Day, an unusually warm one that should have them out on their porches visiting friends and family.

Jack cut out a two-foot square section of the chain-link fencing, flapped it upward, and guided them through before dropping the section back into place. A thin crescent moon smiled upward, like the mouth of the Cheshire Cat, providing just enough illumination for Janet to see without the aid of the compact night-vision goggles in her backpack.

In front of her, Jack paused, examining what lay ahead with those strange eyes of his. Then he was moving again, down across the valley, toward the far tree line.

Her baby kicked in her stomach, but Janet ignored it. Jack needed her attention on the here and now, not on the impetuous child in her belly, no matter how wonderful it was.

Each military base had its oddities, and those could be exploited. Command and control centers were always heavily guarded. But the antennas that performed the actual satellite uplinks were largely ignored. Manned facilities required guards, unmanned equipment didn’t. It was an un-chanted mantra.